MAM
McDonald’s serves up DVD rentals in the US
MUMBAI: Burger chain giant McDonald’s is eyeing the DVD rental market in the US. As part of their entry into the home entertainment market, the company has kicked off its DVD rental campaign, starting with 100 of its Denver area outlets.
Each store is being winged with a kiosk that can store up to 300 discs and some 30-40 current-release DVD titles.
Observers note that the penetration plans of McDonald’s into a space dominated by rental chains Blockbuster and Hollywood Video and mass-market retailers like Best Buy and Wal-Mart could shake up the balance of movie retail power.
There seems to be a clear advantage for McDonald’s in this new venture as the company has 30,000 outlets that serve a whopping 47 million people daily across the globe, while competitor Blockbuster has an inferior 8,900 stores only.
McDonald’s Ventures managing director Mats Lederhausen is quoted as saying, “Satisfying new demands delivered at the speed and value of McDonald’s is a fantastic way to leverage what McDonald’s does best.”
MAM
Smytten appoints Shishir Varma as CEO of Pulseai Research
Rebranded AI platform scales with 150 plus clients and 30 million users.
MUMBAI: In a world obsessed with what consumers say, Smytten is betting on what they actually do. The company has appointed Shishir Varma as chief executive officer of Pulseai Research, signalling a sharper push into AI-led, behaviour-driven consumer insights. The move comes as Smytten rebrands its insights vertical from Smytten PulseAI to Pulseai Research, marking a shift away from traditional, project-based research towards a more continuous, intelligence-led model.
Varma brings over 30 years of global experience across APAC markets, including India, China and Japan. Most recently managing director, Insights at Kantar Japan, he has built and scaled consumer insight businesses across geographies, including playing a key role in establishing Millward Brown in India. His mandate now: turn Pulseai into a category-defining platform in a space still dominated by surveys and static reports.
The pitch is straightforward but ambitious. Instead of relying on claimed responses, Pulseai Research taps into observed behaviour leveraging Smytten’s ecosystem of 30 million users built over a decade of product discovery, trials and purchases. The idea is to close the long-standing gap between what consumers claim and how they actually behave.
The numbers suggest early traction. In under 18 months, the platform has onboarded over 150 enterprise clients across sectors, pointing to growing demand for faster, more reliable alternatives to legacy research models.
Under the hood, the platform blends behavioural data with AI and large language model-led analysis to deliver real-time sentiment tracking, scalable qualitative insights, faster quantitative studies and always-on brand intelligence. In practical terms, that means compressing research timelines from weeks to days without sacrificing depth.
The ambition extends beyond FMCG. Pulseai Research is positioning itself as a cross-category intelligence layer, spanning auto, education, gadgets and emerging consumer segments anywhere behaviour-rich data can sharpen decision-making.
For Smytten, the leadership hire is less about optics and more about direction. With Varma at the helm, the company is leaning into a simple but powerful premise: in the age of AI, insight isn’t just about asking better questions, it’s about watching more closely.
